


shot right through (with a bolt of blue)

by Anonymous



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Angst, Billy Hargrove Has a Crush on Steve Harrington, Billy Hargrove Is Bad at Feelings, Billy Hargrove Redemption, Billy Hargrove Tries to Be a Better Sibling, Bisexual Steve Harrington, Canon Compliant, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Good Babysitter Steve Harrington, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Season/Series 03, Probably OOC I'm sorry, Redemption, Robin Buckley & Steve Harrington Friendship, Self-Indulgent, Slow Burn, Steve Harrington Is a Mess, author is having too much fun with the tags, except alexei rip, hopper is everyone's dad, in this house we appreciate lifeguard billy, robin buckley being the best, steve said dumbass rights, these tags exist and i'm so proud of this community
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-29
Updated: 2019-09-12
Packaged: 2020-09-29 22:29:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20443610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: The Battle of Starcourt left two people stranded in the Upside Down. They're not alone. Billy has a new friend forced upon him and maybe learns to be a decent person along the way. Hopper just wants to find a way out of here. Meanwhile, Steve is a hot mess who might have squatters living in his house. Overall, things are kind of a mess even after the Gate's been closed.





	1. prologue: rocky road

**Author's Note:**

> season three was great but billy died which was not great so we're just gonna backspace that and freestyle it from there folks  
(aka my attempt at a season 4)  
title from bizarre love triangle by new order!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> before the mind flayer messed with the perfect summer, steve had to get used to dealing with difficult customers.

**Scoops Ahoy, Starcourt Mall. June 1985.**

Steve really didn’t need this in his life right now. He was working a dead-end job in a tacky mall for minimum wage, forced to wear a god-awful sailor suit eight hours a day, constantly taken advantage of by the horde of kids he babysat once a week, and routinely made fun of by his only tolerable coworker. Having his high-school nemesis pop in for a sundae was really just the cherry on top (pun intended). 

“Ahoy!” He turned around, customer service smile slipping off his face as he saw who was standing at the other side of the counter. “What do you want, Hargrove?”

Max’s asshole brother gave him a shit-eating grin. “Can’t a guy get some ice cream around here, sailor? Max is busy with that weird El friend of hers and I’m hungry.”

Steve sighed and ran through his mandatory spiel. He didn’t get paid enough for this. “Fine, I guess. Welcome aboard as we set sail on this ocean of flavor. I’ll be your captain. What flavor of ice cream would suit your fancy today?”

Billy Hargrove’s sleazy smile only grew wider. “Holy shit, that sounds so dumb. I’ll have a scoop of chocolate chip and a scoop of chocolate. And make it snappy, princess. I got a couple of harpies I gotta drive home in a few minutes.”

“Coming right up.” Steve tried, and failed, to put his customer service face back on. He hated how easily Billy got under his skin. They weren’t even in high school anymore, why the hell was he still so dead-set on this rivalry bullshit?

He eyed the clock as he got Billy’s order together. 3:55. “Oh, shit.”

“What was that, Harrington?” 

“Uh, nothing.” Steve wasn’t a very fast thinker. He contradicted himself immediately by yelling, “Hey, Robin! It’s almost four o’clock!”

“Be there in a sec, dingus!” She shouted back. Steve’s coworker/friend(?) emerged from the break room and gave Billy an unenthusiastic smile. “I’ll ring you up. Have fun with your science experiment, Steven.”

Billy looked between them and frowned. “The fuck is she on about?”

Steve opened his mouth, and closed it again. How was he supposed to put this. “There’s a… something weird happens every day around this time and I’ve been trying to figure out what it is.”

“Sounds stupid. Let me see.”

“I’m not supposed to let customers back here, sorry..” Steve scratched the back of his neck. 

“Aw, come on! Live a little!” Robin elbowed him in the ribs. “I won’t tell if you don’t.”

This was a horrible idea. “Alright, just don’t be disappointed when it’s not that exciting.”

He reached to open the gate, but the blond beat him to it and slid over the counter, hopping off and landing uncomfortably close to Steve. “Lead the way.”

“Okay, so this is gonna sound really weird,” Steve grabbed a cup of rocky road with chocolate sprinkles that he’d put together earlier out of the freezer, “But every day at exactly four o’clock the power goes out.”

Billy raised an eyebrow. He was chewing a wad of gum and he blew a tiny bubble that popped in Steve’s face. “And? Maybe the mall’s power is shitty. It is kind of an electricity-sucking nightmare.”

“Yeah, but this is _ different_.” Steve insisted. “The power only goes out in here. Lights, freezers, everything. But if you look outside through that window over there, everything outside stays exactly the same.”

Billy’s eyes narrowed. “Prove it.”

“Give me a minute and I will.”

Sure enough, as the clock struck four, the fluorescent lights above them fizzled out and the hum of the freezer abruptly stopped. Steve took a deep breath and placed the cup of rocky road under the table with a spoon stuck in the middle. Then, on Steve’s command, they waited in silence. 

After a few minutes had passed, the lights buzzed back on and the freezer started up again. Steve nodded to an amused-looking Billy. Together, they hopped off their chairs and crouched to view the space below the table. 

The cup was empty and the spoon was gone.


	2. bizarro hawkins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> billy is pretty sure he's in hell, but he can't figure out why the fuck the chief of police is there with him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> told u updates would be inconsistent!! this is 2 of the 4 chapters i have written already so i might wait on ch3 for a bit if i can exercise any self-control  
we'll see how that goes

**The Upside Down. July 1985.**

Billy is pretty sure he’s gonna have a lot of issues if he can ever get out of this shithole. Hell, he already does. The whole time that creepy thing was inside him all he wanted was dark and cold, now he’s pretty sure if he ever sees the light of day again he’s gonna move to the Bahamas. He never wants to be cold. Ever. He used to hate lifeguarding in the blistering Indiana heat. Now he’d give anything to be baking in his ugly metal chair. 

“You with me, Hargrove?”

Billy barely suppresses a flinch and glares at his companion. “Fine and dandy, Chief, jee-_zus _, don’t sneak up on me like that.”

Chief Hopper gives him a _ look._ Reminds him of his old man. He hates it. “Kinda hard to sneak when there’s no one else around for miles.”

“Fuck off.” He wishes he had a jacket on him or something. Wherever the hell they are, it’s cold as shit. He’s wearing a ripped wifebeater and board shorts. At least it’s not the crop top. “Got a light?”

“This air’s not gonna mess with your lungs enough?” The chief asks, already rooting around the pockets of his uniform (He looks _ ridiculous _ dressed like a Russian soldier. This seems to be the summer of stupid costumes.) to pull out, thank _ god,_ a lighter. Billy will die if he doesn’t have a cigarette in his mouth in the next ten seconds. 

“So what’s the plan?” He asks, when he’s standing a comfortable distance away and has smoke curling comfortably in his lungs and out. “Do we even _ have _ a plan? You got experience with this shit?”

The last question isn’t really a question. Hopper’s filled him in on enough that he knows there’s been a shitstorm surrounding this mirror-image hellscape of Hawkins since before he moved there. If anybody knows how to get out of there, it’s got to be Hopper. It has to be Hopper. Because otherwise they’re screwed. 

The cop sighs long-sufferingly, like he’s dealt with this shit for too long. Billy has to agree with him on that front. He’d give everything he holds dear to have his boring summer of ‘85 back. Though, to be fair, it is a depressingly short list. 

Hopper takes his own cig out of his mouth for a moment to breathe. “To be honest, kid, this is my first time on _ this _ side of the situation.”

Billy bristles at that. He’s not a fucking _ kid__._ He’s _ eighteen__._ Who the fuck does this guy think he is?

“But I know people who have been, and who have been able to survive and get back to the normal world. Will Byers, for one. And that kid’s a twig now. Imagine how he was two years ago. We’re grown men. We can handle ourselves. The plan is to handle ourselves and stay put until help arrives.”

What the fuck. “What the _ fuck__?”_ Billy glares. “That’s bullshit! I’m not going to sit around on my _ ass _ and waste away while we wait for help. Who’s gonna come get us, huh? The police? _ You are the police!” _

More words linger on the edge of his tongue like venom. _ I refuse to sit around and twiddle my thumbs while we’re stuck dying in the bizarro version of Buttfuck, Indiana. I take enough shit at home and don’t fight back. If I can do something to get out of _ this _ nightmare then I will. _ But Hopper interrupts him before he can continue. 

“There’s only one person who can find us.” That gets Billy’s attention. “We just have to stay put until she does.”

“Who?” He demands. 

“My little girl, Jane.” Billy scoffs. His life is in the hands of a child. Fantastic. 

“And how old is this Jane?”

“She’s Max’s age. They’re friends.”

The only girl friend Max had was that weirdo El. Were they the same person? “How the fuck do you get El from Jane?”

Hopper shrugs. “Ask the kids, they’re the ones that came up with it.” He scratches his quickly-forming beard (which looks stupid, by the way, but not quite as stupid as the moustache all by itself). “In all seriousness, Jane will find us. She found Will and she can find us.”

Billy is very tempted to say _ “sounds like some bull” _ but something prevents him from bursting Hopper’s bubble that much. Maybe it’s his conscience, if that thing is by some miracle in working order. Instead, he mutters, “Gonna look for some food.” and heads off in a random direction to be alone with his thoughts. 

And also, he is really hungry. 

The fucked up thing about this place, Billy’s quickly learned, is that it’s a dustier, darker, exact mirror image of Hawkins but with none of the people. The chief had called it the Upside Down, and while Billy absolutely will not call it something that sounds like it was made up by a bunch of sixth graders, he has to admit there’s a lot of truth in the title. It’s Bizarro Hawkins. Everything is the same, but different. Turned on its head. Upside-down. 

It’s eerily quiet. Hopper told him earlier about the monsters they need to be on the lookout for, but there’s no sign of anything creepy or crawly in sight. There’s no sign of anything _ alive _ in sight. 

Billy wanders along the streets of Bizarro Hawkins, and wonders which version of this tiny town he hates more. There’s less trashy personalities in this one, admittedly, but also this one is fucking boring and scary. That’s the worst combo ever. His life is boring and scary. 

He stares down at his feet as he walks. Maybe if he concentrates hard enough on the dark pavement beneath his sandaled feet he can pretend it’s just another normal day. But as he advances down another street, a sliver of light hits his toes and his head shoots up. 

The lights are on in the house in front of him. 

“Holy shit.” Billy’s cigarette drops out of his mouth. He startles and stomps it out before he accidentally sets this trash pit ablaze. 

It’s a huge house, too. Almost makes him think he’s in Beverly Hills for a second. Must be the hoity-toity part of town, he thinks. The curtains are all drawn, but a couple windows are letting just enough light through to emit a warm glow. Billy misses the sun. 

He walks towards the mini-mansion. There’s probably food inside. Food would be fucking _ stellar _ right now. His stomach rumbles in agreement. 

He wonders whose house this is on the other side. It’s generic enough that there’s pretty much no way of knowing, at least from the outside. 

Another thought occurs to him—he can use the drapes as bandages. That will definitely help the five gaping holes in his chest. Right now he’s doing his best to hug himself as a way of applying pressure, but he has a feeling actual wrapping will feel a lot better. 

Part of Billy is worried that somebody is inside the house and they’ll attack him on sight. The other, more rational part, reminds him that he and Hopper are the only people here. There’s a better chance he’ll be killed by a monster than another human. He’ll be fine. 

It almost feels like a museum inside. A very empty museum. Leather couches, pristine carpets, wall art, vases that look like they haven’t been touched in a century. And the lights are on. _ Why are the lights on? _

Billy finds his way into the (insultingly nice) kitchen and stops short. There _ is _ somebody else in here. Another _ person_. Someone a few inches shorter than Billy with wild dark blonde hair and dressed in an oversized t-shirt is raiding the fancy house’s fridge. 

He really jinxed himself, didn’t he. Maybe he should try and sneak away while he still can, but Billy has never been one to back away from confrontation. Not even when he can’t fight back.

“Uh, I come in peace?” He winces. He needs to work on his _ decent-person _ voice. He’s too used to the _ asshole-and-he-knows-it _ tone. 

The other person whirls around—a girl, he’s pretty sure. She’s got a feral look in her eyes, and they keep darting around him as though the girl is searching for other potential threats. Billy, who spent his entire life puffing up his feathers and clawing his way to the top, tries his best to look non-threatening. “Hi.”

The girl bares her teeth and the lightbulb above them glows so brightly it bursts. She’s wearing gingham pajama pants and a giant Madonna tee that hangs off one shoulder. She sprints out of the room before Billy can say anything else. 

He follows her at a steady pace. When he was really little he had a cat that would come to visit sometimes. It ran away really quickly but got tired just as fast. He remembers being told that the best part of being human is that you can just keep walking. 

They move from room to room. The girl keeps making faces and the electricity keeps shorting out, and Billy keeps trying to stay calm. She hasn’t been violent yet. Just defensive. Billy knows defensive. 

Finally, it seems like the girl has tired herself out and is curled up in the corner of a bedroom, in between the bed and the wall. She’s hugging her knees and her nose is bleeding. Billy wouldn’t guess she’s a day over sixteen, but the clothes and position make her look smaller. 

“My name’s Billy.” He says, as close to calm as he can ever be. “I’m not here to hurt you, alright?”

He crouches down so they can be at eye level. The girl leans away slightly, but makes no move to escape. Slowly, she inclines her head in a nod. 

“You got a name, kid?” She only looks to be a year or two younger than him, but the address just slips out. 

No response. Christ, Billy doesn’t have the emotional fortitude to handle this right now. 

“Fine, I guess I’ll just call you kid for now.” Billy rubs his chin and glances about the room. It’s simply furnished, nondescript. If not for the small pile of dirty clothes at the foot of the bed and slightly rumpled sheets he’d guess this joint was uninhabited on the other side, too. 

The two sit in silence for a moment, the girl cataloguing Billy’s face like she’s trying to unlock the secrets of the universe and Billy just looking at this sad room, trying to think of something to say. 

“Find any good food in that fridge?” He ends up deciding on. “I’m _ starving_.”

The girl stares for a moment longer. Then her lips twitch up and her eyes sparkle and she nods again. She stands up, climbs over the bed, and walks out of the room. Billy follows after her. 

As it turns out, whoever lives in this house has a pretty sweet stash of ice cream. Billy and his new buddy dig into the chocolate chip and chocolate, respectively, with reckless abandon. The girl is hesitant to save some for later, but at Billy’s mentioning of someone else he needs to get food for, she mercifully spares a couple bites. 

Quietly munching on his ice cream, Billy can’t help looking around the place again. High-quality TV, a very nice boombox, comfortable couches, working lights, multiple bathrooms. He could get used to this. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please comment!!!


	3. joan fucking jett

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> steve's radio is acting up and he's very tired.

Steve fucking hates Joan Jett.

He didn’t always hate Joan Jett. In fact, there was a time where he found her music to be decently tolerable. 

Now, however, after a solid two days of his radio playing Joan Jett _ non-stop _ without his knowledge or consent, even when he took out the batteries and checked that he didn’t leave a cassette in (and he didn’t even _ have _ a Joan Jett cassette), Steve feels confident in saying he’s on the verge of a major mental breakdown. 

In the past month he’s watched a lot of people get hurt and die. He’s gotten beaten up by crazy Russians and faced nightmarish monsters that only added to his ongoing list of traumas, but what finally did him in was the ghost of Joan Jett. Figures. 

He’s humming “Crimson and Clover” against his will as he walks into Family Video today. Robin will greet him by calling him dingus and all Steve will do is smile and say good morning. This is his life now. Wake up, get insulted, try and fail to flirt with every cute girl he sees, try and fail to set those same girls up with Robin when they turn him down, play chauffeur to a group of freshmen that he babysits, go home, try and fail to sleep, repeat. He’s _ tired__._ Steve is tired down to his bones and he’s fresh out of high school.

He spots a head of blonde hair out of the corner of his eye. “Hey, Robin.”

“Dingus!” His friend greets fondly. She’s over in the comedy section, a shorter girl with brown hair beside her. “Keith’s going away for the next month, so we have a new friend. Meet Shannon.”

The girl beside her, Shannon, smiles and waves. She has a smattering of freckles across her face and steel-blue eyes. Steve waves back. “Hi.”

“She’s like me,” Robin whispers conspiratorially, a hand cupping her mouth. Steve flounders for a second. 

“So—are you two, um…” He lets the question hang in the air. 

Robin and Shannon glance at each other and burst out laughing. 

“Steven,” Robin wheezes. Shannon is doubled over, clutching her sides as she giggles. 

“Steven,” Robin tries again. Steve is feeling pretty stupid by this point. “You like girls. Are you attracted to every girl you come in contact with?”

He pulls a face. “No.”

Robin stares at him patiently in the way that she often does when Steve is slow on the uptake. She reminds him of Nancy sometimes. 

Then he puts two and two together and says _“__oh__,”_ you know, like a dumbass. 

“You’re lucky I love you, buddy.” Robin pats him on the head. “We know each other from _ band__,_ not some secret tryst.”

Shannon changes the subject, thank the lord, and asks him about how they keep the movies in the back room organized. Steve is happy to answer a question he knows the answer to. Then the last few notes of a New Order song on the store’s tinny radio fade out and are replaced by—surprise, surprise—“Cherry Bomb.” In other words, more Joan goddamn Jett. Steve groans. 

“What’s wrong now? We haven’t had a single person walk in yet.” Robin asks. Shannon twirls a lock of hair in her hand.

“Nothing, it’s just—” Steve struggles to word it properly without sounding actually insane. “My radio’s been playing nothing but Joan Jett for the past two days. I’m a little sick of her.”

“It’s _ possible _ to be _ sick _ of _ Joan Jett?__”_ Shannon asks incredulously. Robin snickers. 

“Shannon,” The blonde says when she’s finally done laughing at Steve’s expense, “Why don’t you check out the state of things in the back? I think there’s a few movies that just came in that need to be sorted out.”

When her friend disappears to the back room, Robin adopts a more serious face. “You think it’s connected to the Upside Down stuff?”

Steve feels even more like a moron for not thinking of that. Well, he had, at the start, but he rationalized that the only person who could possibly be in the Upside Down was Hopper, and Hopper had no reason blasting mediocre rock music in Steve’s house at all hours of the day. Hopper would sit and wait for El to find him. But if it _ wasn’t _ Hopper…

“I mean, maybe.” He finally says aloud. “But the only person possibly alive in the Upside Down is Hopper. Why would the chief of police be blasting my radio?"

“I dunno.” Robin slides her elbows onto the counter and rests her head on her hands. “Why would he?”

She lets Steve think. It’s a nice gesture. That’s one thing Robin and Nancy don’t have in common. They both have lightning-quick wit, but Robin understands the social courtesy of letting the people around her catch up. Why on Earth does Steve have to be friends with so many smart people?

The kids are all smart, the nerds that they are. Nancy was the top of their class. Robin simply _ chooses _ to have low grades, something about a political statement. Even Jonathan is smart in his artsy sort of way. 

Jonathan. 

“I got it!” Steve practically yells. It feels like guessing a Wheel of Fortune answer and getting it right after ten tries. “Jonathan told me that when Will was stuck there he turned on his radio as a way to show he was there. Maybe it’s not a literal ‘listening to music’ thing. Maybe Hopper is just trying to tell us that he’s alive!”

“Oh my god, you could be right!” Robin grins, before looking thoughtful. “Why would he pick your house, though? Not the Byers’ or the Wheelers’ or something?”

“Hell if I know.” Steve is high on life. He figured it out. “We gotta tell El.”

“We gotta tell El.” Robin agrees. “Go. Shannon and I can hold the fort.”

Steve offers a quick thanks and scrambles to his Beemer. He grabs the walkie hidden under the passenger seat and pulls up the antenna. “Guys, you’re not gonna believe this.”

When he gets home, the radio isn’t playing Joan Jett. But it is playing. 

_ “I was happy in the haze of a drunken hour _

_ But heaven knows I’m miserable now.” _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please comment!!! thank u for reading :)


	4. miserable makeovers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> billy gives the kid a musical education.

_ “Two lovers entwined pass me by _

_ And heaven knows I’m miserable now.” _

The kid takes to the boombox like a spark plug to water. She’s some sort of human lightning rod, able to control the flow of electricity from her fingertips with a scrunch of her nose. The problem is that Bizarro Hawkins doesn’t get radio signals, so little miss Thor couldn’t get anything but static when she tried turning on the device by herself. 

She’d curled right back in on herself when Billy brought up bringing Hopper to her, putting her empty ice cream carton to the side and staring at her socked feet. The kid still refused to talk, but Billy noticed she tensed at the word ‘man,’ which was weird, because she didn’t seem to have a problem with Billy himself. She relaxed when he told her he’d keep her a secret, though, so that was just the way it’d have to be.

He brought a bag of chips back so the chief wouldn’t starve, and stayed with him for a short while. Then he remembered the record store in town and bullshitted some excuse to get on the move again. 

He grabbed a few cassettes—some ZZ Top, the Smiths, Joan Jett, the works—and moseyed back over to the museum house. The kid was right where he left her, staring at the radio as though concentrating hard enough would bring the radio waves to them.

Billy popped in a Joan Jett tape, and the kid wouldn’t let him take it out for two days.

Now he’s finally convinced her to add some variety to her music taste, and _ The Smiths _ is wafting over the pair as they lie on the carpeted floor. 

_ “I was looking for a job, and then I found a job _

_ And heaven knows I'm miserable now.” _

“What is ‘miserable’?”

The voice is so small Billy thinks he imagines it. He turns to look at the kid. Wonders what kind of shit she’s been through that gave her that haunted look in her eye and the magic powers.

“It’s like sad,” He explains, “But times a thousand.”

She worries her lip and Billy can basically see her doing the math. “Oh.”

_ “In my life _

_ Oh, why do I give valuable time _

_ To people who don't care if I live or die?” _

“Are you… miserable?” She tests the word out loud. She can’t be over a year younger than him, but she sounds _ so young._

Billy thinks. 

Thinks about how he misses teaching tiny kids how to swim, the ones too young to give him backtalk. There’s one kid he gives lessons to, Jessie, who has trouble swimming for long without getting winded. She’s a real trooper. Two weeks ago she swam the length of the pool and Billy felt some approximation of happy.

He thinks about how Heather had always been a nice coworker, a great conversationalist and excellent at helping him insult the pool’s patrons. The closest thing he’d ever had to a friend since the fifth grade. 

He thinks about his shitbird of a stepsister, who stays out late to get him in trouble and doesn’t listen when he tries to protect her. Thinks of her bratty friends, who all seem to hate him but stubbornly stay civil every time they see him. Thinks that Max probably told them to do so. Thinks that maybe he was begrudgingly fond of her.

Thinks about Steve Harrington and his stupid poofy hair. Thinks about how much he misses pulling his pigtails, in the metaphorical sense.

“Yeah.” He answers. “I am pretty miserable.”

The kid hums. “I can feel it. When you’re hurting. Here.”

She sits up and Billy follows suit. The kid gently touches his forehead with her fingertips. He pretends not to notice her sharp exhale, like the wind just got knocked out of her, and the tears that prick at the corners of her eyes. She draws back her hand as if she’s been burned. 

“Lost…” Her eyes are wide and sad. It reminds him of Harrington. “Everyone. Lost. You—you and the sister and the boy and _ everyone_.”

Billy doesn’t know what to do. The girl wipes away the blood below her nose and shudders through a sob. 

“Told you. Miserable.” He decides on saying. 

The kid nods. There’s a small tattoo on her wrist, one that reads _ 010_. He’s just noticed it. “Miserable,” she agrees. 

Billy hates how he feels after the kid does her freaky mind-reading thing. Like a bug pinned on the wall, helpless to do anything but be examined. “Listen, kid. Don’t ever do that again without permission, to anyone. It’s unsettling as fuck.”

“Okay.” She stares at her feet and wiggles her toes. She gets such a kick out of those socks. 

“I know you saw it.” The girl looks at Billy, and the force of her stare goes through him. “The number. That’s my name.”

What kind of human experiment sci-fi _ bullshit— _

“I’m not gonna call you that. Shit’s fucked up.” He says resolutely. He’s not gonna let this kid’s name be a number. It’s dehumanizing and wrong. This was the kind of stuff that happened in dystopian novels, not in real life. Billy thought humanity had all agreed World War II wasn’t going to have a repeat performance. 

(Then again, they said that about World War I, and we all saw how that turned out.)

“Okay.” The kid picks at a scab on her arm. They’re quiet for a minute, because Billy can’t think of anything to say and the kid doesn’t talk much without being spoken to.

Billy tugs on a springy lock of his hair. It’s gotten too long for his liking recently, to the point where, without hair product, it’s barely allowed to be called a mullet anymore. “Geez, I need a haircut.”

“What is ‘haircut’?” The girl asks. 

“‘S when you cut your hair.” Billy says uselessly. What other way could he put it? “Usually with scissors, sometimes a razor.”

“Why?”

“Fashion, I guess.” He shrugs. “People just like their hair to look different ways. Plus, short hair is easier to deal with. But long hair can get tied back and stuff. It boils down to personal preference, really.”

“I know where there are scissors.” The kid looks unreasonably pleased with herself for having this knowledge. Billy, under any other circumstance, would probably find it annoying, but given that they’re both trapped in an alternate dimension and he’s eighty percent sure she’s permanently traumatized, he thinks it’s kind of _ endearing_. He’s been here less than a week and he’s going soft. 

“Then lead the way, Ten-nessee.” She’s already bouncing up and across the room, visibly pleased as punch with her new nickname. 

The newly-christened Tennessee leads him to a bathroom up a grand staircase. It’s nice, especially by Bizarro Hawkins standards. Whoever lives here in Normal Hawkins must really care about their hair. She opens a cabinet under the sink and out spills a hair dryer, a container of hair gel, a canister of Farrah Fawcett hair spray, and an assortment of hair brushes and combs. “Damn.”

Tennessee sticks her chin out to the cabinet, and Billy hunches over to see further inside. Bingo. A pair of scissors _ and _ a razor. 

“Here goes nothing.” He shoots the kid a toothy grin and brings the scissors to his untamed curls. The kid stretches her mouth to imitate the smile back. She looks like a lion cub pretending to be a grown-up lioness, especially considering they’ve both got crazy manes at the moment. 

Billy hasn’t had short hair in _ years_. His dad used to give him shit about it, when it would get too long for his liking. Said it wasn’t manly enough. Growing it out was an act of teenage rebellion that he’d just never bothered to stop. Sure, it was annoying when Neil pulled on his hair, but his mom had always liked it long. “Angel hair,” she’d called it. Billy doesn’t want angel hair anymore. He’s tired of lying all the time. 

He reaches for the razor, goes to plug it in. Then remembers where he is. 

“Kid, think you can power this up for me?” He waves the end of the cord at her. She nods, and Billy hands her the power cord. 

Tennessee Screwball makes a scrunched-up sort of face and the razor buzzes to life. She wipes at her nose with her free hand and Billy gets to work. 

A couple minutes later, he’s staring at a guy he barely recognizes in the mirror. He looks like fucking George Michael. And honestly? He doesn’t hate it. 

The kid mimics his teeth-baring smile at him through the mirror. He smirks and turns to her. “You like it, buddy?”

She nods frantically. “Nice.”

“Nah, kid, this haircut ain’t nice.” Billy grins, slow and lazy. He looks nothing like himself, but feels more like it than he has in a long-ass time. “It’s just plain _ rad_.”

“Rad.” Tennessee parrots back, hazel eyes wide with wonder. 

“Yep.” He pops the ‘p.’ “Told ya. Haircuts are pretty sweet, even if they are sorta useless in the grand scheme of things.”

The girl is silent for a moment, but she keeps staring at him. Processing.

“Can—can I also have haircut.” She phrases it so hesitantly, like she can’t tell if she’s allowed to ask. Billy says yes before he’s fully aware of it. 

At first he shoots for a Molly Ringwald-type style, all girly and preppy and shit, but the kid’s face says it all. 

“You want it shorter? Or a different style? Talk to me, Lite Brite.”

“Want it _ rad_.” She stresses. “Like _ yours_.”

“Shorter?” She nods. 

“Little more hairspray?” She nods, a little less enthusiastically. 

Billy snorts. “Yeah, I know the smell’s not great.”

When he’s done, she looks frighteningly similar to the Karate Kid, but she doesn’t seem to mind it too much. 

“Thank you.” She says deliberately, pronouncing each word with so much feeling Billy nearly turns and runs the other direction. 

But he doesn’t. 

“You’re very welcome, Miss Tennessee.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please comment literally anything!! i'm writing this for fun but feedback would really help me figure out which direction i wanna take the story in!


	5. the ghostbusters of hawkins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> steve takes the mystery of the ghost radio to the smartest people he knows. a bunch of 14-year-olds.

“So you’re saying Hopper… is alive.” Mike says in his usual uppity fashion. Listen, Steve knows he’s dumb, but being talked down to by a fourteen-year-old is not doing anything for his ego.

“I’m saying he _ might _ be,” Steve clarifies. “Either _ someone _in the Upside Down is trying to make contact, or I have a punk-rock ghost possessing my radio.”

“Steve.” Dustin is trying for a gentle tone, Steve can tell, but with a voice as loud as his it isn’t working well. He appreciates the effort, though. “Will’s mom said she saw the machine blow up. Hopper was right next to it. According to physics, he should be pretty damn dead.”

“Okay, well,” Steve runs a hand through his hair. “It’s someone, alright? I’m not going crazy. Something’s going on with my radio. Aren’t you guys like, the Ghostbusters of Hawkins? Can you at least take a look at it or something?”

“I used the radio to talk to Jonathan, when I was there.” Will pipes up. He’s sitting between his two friends on the Wheelers’ couch. Max and Lucas are away on what they claim isn’t a date, and El is in the kitchen raiding the fridge’s waffle supplies.

Steve has a soft spot for the kid, who’s everything he wasn’t when he was his age—softspoken, sensitive, thoughtful, and wise. The other kids in their little nerd-pack make fun of him for it, but he really is Will the Wise. Even if the hat is a little silly.

“We know that,” Mike holds his hands out to Will in a placating gesture. “But if we’re sure Hopper’s dead—which we _ are _—who else could it be? The Flayed? They all got turned to goo.”

Mike’s hesitance to entertain Hopper’s being alive is understandable. Mrs. Byers and El are pretty torn up about him and it would be cruel to give them hope only to dash it again.

“Billy.” El’s monotone sends shivers up Steve’s spine. She’s standing at the feet of the basement stairs, staring at them all with an intensity that could knock over a house. His train of thought screeches to a halt at the mention of the guy who smashed his face in with a plate.

“Billy’s dead, too, El.” Mike tells her, noticeably less condescending than he was to his babysitter. 

“Yeah, he sacrificed his _ life_.” Dustin yells. Dustin’s inside voice is a yell. “He got stabbed in the guts a bunch of times. You were right there.”

El’s head moves in a tiny shake from side to side. “Didn’t die. Only got hurt.”

“Um, holy _ shit?” _ Mike gapes. “You’re saying Billy’s been _ alive _this whole time?”

“Do you know where he is?” Dustin blurted, his words overlapping with the end of Mike’s question.

“What are we gonna tell Max?” Will asked.

“Don’t know where he is.” El frowned. “I could find him.”

“El, I thought you said your powers weren’t working.” Mike counters. 

The kids devolve into a snappy debate using words that sounded either far too advanced for their age group or entirely made up, and Steve sits staring at his hands in silence. Billy’s alive. He doesn’t know what to do with this information. 

If he had any common sense, he’d be a little disappointed. Billy tried to kill him one time. He tried to hurt _ Lucas_. _ Nobody _messes with Steve’s kids and gets away with it. Billy’s rude, crude, and a total asshole.

But on the other hand.

Billy hadn’t tried to touch him once since that night. He never antagonized the kids, aside from the occasional name-calling. He still drove Max to the arcade, and when he waited outside with Steve sometimes he let him have a spare cigarette. And he only ever got really pissy when Max was late. To be fair, it was an overreaction, but he did consistently tell her to be on time and she consistently ignored him. 

And Billy had gone out of his way to talk to Steve. Not just about Max, or the kids. He talked to Steve about random things and Steve listened and when Steve talked about random things he listened back. It didn’t feel condescending like with Nancy, or awkward like with Jonathan. Even talking to the kids was a little weird, because he was so much older than them. They were_ kids._ Before Steve had Robin, Billy was kind of the only chance Steve had at normal conversation. No expectations of King Steve or Steve the Babysitter. Just Steve. Just Steve and Billy.

So he sits there and looked stupid, like he always does.

_ “I can find him,” _ El is saying when he tunes back in. Her eyes are wide and she’s engaging Mike in the most intense staring contest Steve’s ever seen. “You have to trust me.”

“Mike,” Will chimes in. “Let her try.”

Under the combined force of El’s and Will’s puppy-dog eyes, Mike relents. “Fine. but don’t blame me if it goes to shit.”

“Language,” Steve scolds reflexively. 

El busies herself settling down in front of the TV while Mike goes to get something they can use as a blindfold. Will fiddles with the television, making it turn to static, and Dustin, with nothing else to do, focuses his attention on Steve. 

“How you holding up, man?”

Steve shrugs and tries to suppress a yawn. He hasn’t slept properly in a long damn time. “I’m hanging in there. What about you, bud?”

Dustin gives him a gummy smile and goes on and on about how _ exciting _ this summer was, and how _ cool _ he feels after defeating the Russians, and how _ brave _Suzie says he is whenever they talk to each other. Steve relaxes into the couch and lets Dustin do all the talking. And Dustin does a lot of talking.

“Shh.” El tells them shortly, the sleeves of one of Mike’s puffy autumn jackets wrapped around her eyeline in place of a blindfold. Dustin shuts up.

There’s a very tense moment where they all just wait, El’s face screwed up in concentration while blood starts to flow from her nose. Mike is hovering at her side, hand twitching. Will has resumed his seat on the couch, but looks about an inch away from falling off if he scoots a tiny bit forward. Dustin’s expression is just as serious. Steve knows they all get on edge when El does the blindfold thing. Apparently one time she almost couldn’t get out of what she calls the “blank space.” He’s aware he’ll probably get fired from his unofficial job if he lets one of the kids die while he’s watching them. 

After a few minutes pass—it could have been ten or twenty—El tears the jacket sleeves off and gasps for breath. 

“Did you find him? What did you see?” The boys all crowd around her and Steve has to tell them to give her some space.

“Found Billy.” El is still heaving between words. “He’s with… he’s with a _ girl.” _

**Author's Note:**

> hey uh this is gonna be fun but also heads up chapter lengths and posts will be very inconsistent i apologize in advance  
please come talk to me in the comments and hmu on tumblr (main is @waitsorrywheredoiputtheusername, sideblog is @uhhh80sgays)  
poll for the audience: nancy/robin?????????


End file.
